Sermon 75 - Bibliodivergent
Jeremiah 33:3
Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.
I know that I am supposed to present you with a problem, and then present you with a nice, Christian answer, and tie it up neatly with a bow by the end of the sermon.
Sorry. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to present you with a bunch of questions, and a bunch of problems, and I'm not going to give you any answers. This sermon is about ambiguity and living with ambiguity. Deal with it.
Okay, possibly a little bit of a smile for you to begin with, since an awful lot of the latter part of this sermon is going to get pretty heavy. I originally titled this sermon "Disturbance." And then I changed it to "Bibliodivergent" because of the connection with neurodivergent, and also because I realized that the use of the word disturbance that most of you would be most familiar with would be from the Star Wars movie, the one that was shot first, but has subsequently been retitled Episode IV, where Alec Guinness pretends to stumble and look distressed, and when the others query him about this he says, "I felt a disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices had cried out in pain and then were silenced."
And, actually, "silenced" is kind of appropriate to what I'm going to talk about here. We don't like disturbances. We don't like to be disturbed. We like our life to go on steady, and placid, and we don't care or worry too much if it's not terribly exciting, as long as it doesn't get too dangerous. We don't like distress. We don't like disturbances. We don't like to be alerted to danger. And, really, that's what pain and distress are. They are alerting us to danger.
But we don't *want* to be alerted. To be alerted means we have to pay attention. The "pay" part, in the phrase "pay attention," is probably deliberate. Paying attention means that we have to expend energy. It's not restful if we have to pay attention. And we definitely like restful.
Our world is anything but restful, if you are actually paying attention. Our world is incredibly complex, and there are dangers around every corner. New dangers arise so fast that we can't even learn effectively about the old ones, before we are presented with new difficulties. It's not restful. It's disturbing.
People allied with Chinese culture, and particularly those who are active on the Internet, have recently come up with a new saying for it: "Life is hard already, please don’t burst my bubbles."
In other words, they don't want you to burst their bubble. They don't want you to take off their rose-coloured glasses. They don't want to be alerted to the dangers, even if that means that they are, in fact, in danger! They'd rather not know. As long as not knowing also means that they're not going to be disturbed.
And there's yet another way to put that: (aka Isaiah 30:10-11)
They say to the seers, "See no more visions!" and to the prophets, "Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!"
He was throwing out anti-religious statements. Not necessarily because they were a firm commitment for him but because, in the full flower of twelve-year-old rebellion, he knew that it would upset us. I put it to him: God, the God who has created the entire universe and any other universes that there may be, if there are other universes, loves you and wants to be your best friend. Given that fact, is there anything, anything at all in the world, that is more important?
He immediately fired back, "Money."
I said, "God invented money."
You could practically *see* the wheels going around in his head. He was coming up with all kinds of ideas for every idea he came up with, but he was also clever, and you could tell that he knew what the answer was going to be. Finally he simply said to me, "You're messing with my head, aren't you?" Yes, I said.
Somebody once observed to Gloria that I had a tendency to think outside the box. Gloria replied, "I don't think that Rob knows that there *is* a box."
On another occasion, in some exasperation with me, Gloria noted, "Rob, not only are you weird, but you like it that way!" I thought that that was funny and I noted it to a friend. My friend immediately fired back, "Not only that, but I suspect that you *practice!*"
I think differently from other people. I see the world very often from a different angle. An awful lot of people think that I'm around the bend. But maybe I get a better view from there. I have to admit that I rather enjoy seeing the world differently. Sometimes it's very useful.
There was one time that my father presented to me a problem that had been troubling the church board for several months. He presented it to me as an intractable problem. He didn't expect a solution. Before he had fully even fully explained the problem, I had the solution. As soon as he did finish explaining the problem, I presented the solution to him. My father was very good at finding problems in anything you presented to him, and I could see that he examined my proposed solution from every possible angle and couldn't find anything wrong with it. Finally, and still looking somewhat surprised, he asked me, "How did you come up with that?"
My father had never appreciated the fact that I see the world differently and particularly the weird sense of humour that it gives me. I thought about it for a couple of seconds, and then replied, "You know all those jokes of mine that you don't like? It comes from the same place."
However, as much as I like talking about myself, this sermon isn't about me. It is about disturbing people. Or, rather, it is about people being disturbed. Generally speaking, people do not like to be disturbed. But it's rather important that, at least from time to time, people are presented with things that disturb them. That is how we fix things. That is, very often, how we learn. That is how we improve things.
Jesus knew this. Jesus knew this very well, in fact. An awful lot of the content of the Gospels is about Jesus disturbing people.
We are so used to the stories about the places where Jesus was disturbing people that we have mentally sanitized them. Very often they no longer disturb us because we need to go back to the originals and look at how disturbing they are.
One more story about Gloria. Gloria had this really intuitive and unique sense of how children, and particularly infants, viewed the world. She always said that you should try, as often and as much as you possibly could, to see the world the way children saw the world. Seeing the world the way children saw the world was your only opportunity to see the world in a new way. (She was right.)
Now, I'm not going to give you any answers to the problems in the way Jesus turns the world upside down present to us. So why am I even raising this issue? Well, there's this smart guy. You might have heard of him. His name's Einstein. And one of the many things that he said that we should listen to is that doing the same thing, over and over and over again, and expecting to get a different result, is the very definition of insanity. We are facing a uniquely complex and challenging world. And we keep on using our tried and true methods to solve the problems that we see. And, lo and behold, we find that the methods are possibly tried, but they definitely aren't true. We keep on doing the same thing, and failing, and every time we expect a new and glorious result. That's just crazy.
I really like the song "Clouds" by Joni Mitchell. Pete Seeger added an extra verse to it. And one of the lines that he added to this extra verse strikes me is really profound, and appropriate for this situation. It reads, we've all been living upside down and turned around with love unfound, until we turn and face the sun, yes, all of us, every one. (And I'm deliberately not going to tell you how "sun" is spelled.)
I really think that Jesus was very deliberately messing with us when he spoke some of these difficult passages. I really think that he intended us, every once in awhile, and possibly even more than every once in awhile, to look at things differently. I think he wanted his disciples to look at the world differently. Well, actually I know that he wanted his disciples to look at the world differently. Paul makes that pretty explicit in the book of Romans. The wisdom of God is foolishness to men. We grow up in the natural world. We learn to view the world the world's way. And we need to start trying, possibly trying desperately, to see the world a different way. So here are a few of the difficult viewpoints that Jesus gave to us.
Well, right off there is the Good Shepherd. Jesus called himself the good shepherd. We call Jesus the good shepherd. We have an image of gentle Jesus, meek and mild, leading his flock of sheep. All of us there as sheep following the Good Shepherd. In the image that we have, there's probably one struggling, possibly injured, lamb that the Good Shepherd is carrying on his shoulders. That's the image we have.
That's not the image his listeners in the first century would have had. Good shepherd? The original listeners to this statement would have had one reaction: ba-a-a-a-a-ah!
Shepherds were not good. Shepherds were considered to be pretty much second class citizens. Don't worry about the fact that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were all shepherds. Don't worry about the fact that an awful lot of Jews owned sheep. Owning sheep was one thing. Being a shepherd was another. Shepherds were considered untrustworthy. Shepherds couldn't give evidence in a Jewish court. They were considered to untrustworthy to be acceptable as witnesses. Of anything.
Does that make you look at some of these stories a different way?
Okay as long as we're focusing on the good, how about the Good Samaritan? Good Samaritan? The reaction to that statement, from Jewish listeners of the first century, would have been that it was a contradiction in terms. There's no such thing as a good Samaritan! You will remember that one of King David's grandsons, one of King Solomon's sons, who took over the throne after Solomon died, lost ten of the original twelve tribes. Only Judah and Benjamin stayed together, ruled by the house of David. The other ten tribes deserted, and were ruled by a different dynasty. And that king decided that, if he allowed his people to worship at the temple in Jerusalem, that they would desert him, eventually. So he set up two idols golden calves, two places of worship in his territory. Idols. Oh, and what was his territory? Samaria.
So, what were Samaritans? A bunch of apostate idol worshipers. From the perspective of the Jews, there is no such thing as a good Samaritan.
How about the Cleansing of the Temple?
Well, I mean, it wasn't a cleansing, it was a criminal act, wasn't it? The temple was private property, and, while he was had a right to be there, he was trespassing if he was going to cause trouble.
Okay, yes, that business about the temple should be a house of prayer and you have made it a den of thieves is a direct quote from the prophets in the Old Testament. And Nehemiah and Ezra specifically refer to people who are misusing the temple premises for their own purposes (and possibly business), instead of the proper worship functions.
But that must have seemed very, very close to blasphemy. Although, of course, he wasn't actually impeding worship, was he? Well, yes, I guess he was. After all, the stuff was to be conducted in a certain way and the business depended on the worship, but the worship also depended upon the business. After all, you were supposed to have the right pigeon, or the right dove, or the right lambs. And, well, I mean if they were a bit more expensive, I mean they were here, and your lambs or pigeons or doves were in Tyre or Damascus or Galilee or someplace that wasn't the temple.
So, at the very least, it was definitely disturbing.
Then there is the image of the kingdom of God as yeast. Now, what, in Heaven's name, is wrong with yeast? It's a perfectly valid image! Here's the yeast, working its way through a whole pile of flour, and making it all into bread! Great stuff!
Except that that was not the image of yeast that the Jews had. Even today, if you go into a reasonably orthodox Jewish home, at Passover, you will see all the kids dispatched throughout the house to make sure that they find, and eliminate, any traces of yeast. That's because the image that yeast presents to the Jewish mind is that of corruption. Yes, yeast is necessary for making bread (as long as you are not eating unleavened bread during Passover). But yeast is kind of a necessary evil. Yeast is a tool which you have better very carefully control. Because it's an infection.
And that, by the way, is quite literally true. Yeast is bacteria. Now it's a helpful kind of bacteria, and, used carefully and properly, it gives us some very tasty comestibles. But it's still bacteria. It's still an infection. And if you get it in certain places in your body it can be a very nasty infection indeed! So, to the Jewish mind, yeast stands for corruption and infection. Yeast is bad. When Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God is like yeast, it's almost as if Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God is bad.
But wait. Actually, I think it was Amos who said that. Said why do you long for the day of the Lord? The day of the Lord is going to be pretty dangerous! Maybe we should look at this a bit more carefully. Or, at least, from a different perspective.
There are a couple more stories along the same line. There is, for example, the story of the unjust judge. You may not be as familiar with this story in sermons because it's a little bit troublesome.
Basically there is this widow, who has a valid case. She takes it to a judge and the judge refuses to do anything about it. The judge is waiting for the widow to offer him a bribe in order to get what is rightfully hers. Eventually even though she doesn't offer him a bribe, he finally decides that she's going to keep on coming and asking for her rights no matter what. He might as well give her her valid judgment.
The thing is Jesus, when he uses this parable, is saying that God is like that. Now when we use this parable, very infrequently, in a sermon, we are saying, as Jesus said, that you should pray and keep praying and not give up because eventually God will give you what you need.
But is Jesus *also* saying that God is unjust? Is Jesus also saying that God is corrupt? Is Jesus saying that we need to bribe God?
Maybe we need to look at this in a different way.
And then there's the parable, again, one that we don't hear very often used in sermons, comparing us to an untrustworthy manager and saying that we should be like that untrustworthy manager. Basically this manager has already been caught out, being corrupt, and decides, in order to protect himself, that he is going to be even *more* untrustworthy. He is going to prove that he is not responsible enough for the position that he holds and rip off his employer so that when he gets fired he will have something to live on.
Again usually we use this illustration to say that the kingdom of heaven is worth absolutely anything and everything and you should give everything you possibly can in order to get into the kingdom of heaven. But we've got other parables that make the same point and make it without being quite so problematic.
Maybe we should look at this a bit differently?
Then there was a woman. Well, I mean, that's bad enough right? And she was a foreigner. She was Greek, probably by birth or parentage. She had previously lived in Syro-phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive a demon out of her daughter. Her daughter was suffering. A suffering child. Now, I know she's a foreigner, and Jews didn't have much truck with foreigners. But here she is, a mother, with a suffering sick child.
And what does Jesus do? He refuses! He calls the woman a dog! He calls the child, the suffering child, a dog! Unworthy of being healed!
(I'm using this story in a sermon and I'm trying to make a point. Every time that I get to this point in editing the sermon, I start crying!
It's very inconvenient.
Why on earth am I crying about this? Well possibly because I am suffering at the moment, and God is not doing anything about it. Am *I* unworthy of being healed? Or even comforted?
I'm trying not to take this personally. I am trying to remember that everything will be all right in the end and that if it is not yet all right then it is not yet the end.
But, it's hard, you know?)
Now, you all know the ending of the story. But let's just forget, if we can, for a second, that you know the ending of the story. Let's just look at the story so far. Here is Jesus, saying to a distraught mother, that she and her sick child are dogs, and because he has been sent to feed the children of Israel, he can't do anything for her. As a matter of fact, the way he puts it, it's kind of a moral obligation that he should only help the Jews, and not help her and her daughter.
Now we know that that's not right. As a matter of fact, even though we know the ending of the story, and we know that Jesus knows, and is probably just waiting for the famous statement of faith about picking up the crumbs that fall from the table, even so! The cruelty of that statement to a mother with a sick child! Why did he say that? Why did he *have* to say that? We should probably think about that. Yes, okay, you know the end of the story. Crumbs from the table, daughter gets healed, everybody goes away happy.
But why the cruelty of that statement, even just temporarily?
Then there's the faith of the centurion. That's maybe a little bit easier to understand. But it's still must have really sounded strange to that first century Jewish audience. Jesus says he hasn't seen faith like that in all of Israel. All of Israel! He's making a statement about the faith of a centurion, a representative, and even an *instrument*, of Roman tyranny over the Jewish people! That's a pretty strong statement, and it's completely upside down from anything that his listeners would have expected. Including, I imagine, the centurion!
The death of Lazarus is pretty similar to the woman with the sick child. A messenger comes and tells Jesus that Lazarus is sick. Jesus messes around with his disciples. He dithers around for a couple of days. And then he tells the disciples that Lazarus is sleeping! And then finally he explains that Lazarus has, in fact, died. And that this is to the glory of God.
How do you take that? Even as one of the disciples? It's got to sound pretty weird, overall!
Again, we know the ending of the story. So it's really difficult to *not* remember the ending of the story, and put yourself in the middle of the story. Being messed around. Being misled. All to a good purpose eventually, but it must have felt really strange right in the middle there.
It's definitely something you've got to look at from a different angle.
That these passages exist in the Bible is a fact. That they mean something is a matter of belief. So is the belief that they mean something *to us* and should be considered *by us*.
Mark 7:26-30
The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. "First let the children eat all they want," he told her, "for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs." "Lord," she replied, "even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs." Then he told her, "For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter. She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Matthew 8:5-13
When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. "Lord," he said, "my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly." Jesus said to him, "Shall I come and heal him?" The centurion replied, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."
When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, "Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Then Jesus said to the centurion, "Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would." And his servant was healed at that moment.
John 11:1-4
Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) So the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one you love is sick. When he heard this, Jesus said, "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it."
Luke 18:2-5
He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'
"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!'"
Luke 16:1-8
Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’
3 “The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg— 4 I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’
5 “So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’
6 “‘Nine hundred gallons[a] of olive oil,’ he replied.
“The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’
7 “Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’
“‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied.
“He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’
8 “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.
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